Apple’s Using a Lexus for Self-Driving Car Tests

Bloomberg got pictures of a Lexus that reportedly belongs to Apple. An unnamed source gave the news outlet photos of the Lexus and claimed it emerged from an Apple facility known to be part of Project Titan. That’s Apple’s self-driving car project. The car is a Lexus RX450h SUV, and it has a sporty, “top-of-the-range 64-channel LIDAR, at least two radar and a series of cameras.” One must extend a measure of trust to the unnamed source, but it seems reasonable to imagine this is an Apple vehicle. If not, it’s going to be very like the kind of system Apple would be using to develop its self-driving technology. Apple veteran (legend) Bob Mansfield has refocused and pared down the Project Titan team. Its exclusive focus as of now is thought to be developing a self-driving system before moving on to an actual car. The long and the short of this story, however, is that people care what Apple is doing, even if it’s just testing technology using off-the-shelf components and a nice SUV. Bloomberg has more pics and a GIF of the car.

….and FCA is using a Chrysler Pacifica for the same stuff, except that FCA makes cars in the real world as well. Google has been using Lexus and Prii since 2009 with autonomous tech on Cali roads. Intel/MobileEye is locked in a BMW, Volvo is doing trucks (they own Mack) Believe me , in the automotive world nobody cares what Apple does unless it’s the latest breach of iCloud or yet another iPhone release (someday they might get it down). The ONLY story in automotive is Tesla’s July release of the first production Model 3 cars, all else pales and Apple is so far lost in irrelevance (unless you like to buy a phone every year) it’s not funny.